[evil homer]

One of the most successful D&D/Pathfinder games I've ever run involved taking the PFS scenarios and adapting them to an episodic style home game.  It worked really well and cut down on my prep time some (in my book always a good thing).  My question is do the Living Shadowrun Missions lend themselves well to adaption in a home game setting?  If not why?  Are the Living Shadow Missions any good?  What are some of the better ones?  Are they like the PFS seasons where there is meta-plot for each season?

[Namikaze]

My question is do the Living Shadowrun Missions lend themselves well to adaption in a home game setting?

I think they would, yes.  The games take place in the same location over a period of several months, which works really well for an episodic campaign.

Are the Living Shadow Missions any good?

They're great.

What are some of the better ones?

There's a rather large list to go through, and there are sub-plots and meta-plots galore, so you'll have to go through and pick the ones that match the style you're going for.  While it's not a Missions campaign, I found that Splintered State did a great job of becoming episodic and has a strong creepy factor that is a lot of fun as a GM.

Are they like the PFS seasons where there is meta-plot for each season?

Yep - each Season of the Missions campaign takes place over several months, generally in a single area, and they deal with a large meta-plot with sub-plots thrown in and around the games.  Season 4 dealt with the annexation (liberation?) of the Ork Underground in Seattle.  It's got great political overtones, with plenty of racism, violence, and intrigue to go around.  Season 5 takes place in Chicago, and deals with the remaining bug threats, magical weirdness, and general anarchy of what is left of the Windy City.  I never played any of the previous Seasons, but I really enjoyed Season 4, and I'm enjoying Season 5.  They are wonderful fodder for my game, which is also episodic in nature.  Because my group generally meets up weekly, episodic is really the way to go.

[Belker]

I can only speak for seasons 4 and 5, as I don't have experience with the earlier seasons. 

For season 4, no problem. There are two pretty clearly-defined story arcs, though one is more clear to the PCs than the other. There's a good roster of recurring NPCs (and their accompanying factions) and the overall quality and variety of the missions is pretty good. There's a few with some wonky bits ("What do you mean, the job starts in 15 minutes getting a guy from the building across the street?") but few spots that are really problematic. You can also fold in the "Elven Blood" mini-campaign, which sees the runners make a side trip to Tir Tangire. The one gotcha, depending on how you want to play it, is that the end of the season has something of a fixed point in time - the next-to-last is Election Day, November 2074, which wraps one of the two arcs. The finale takes place a month later.

You've got a lot of material to work with here: 13 adventures (00 to 12) in Season 4 proper, the prequel scenario "Copycat Killer" (originally a convention-only mission) which comes packaged with SRM 04-05, and the option of adding in the five Elven Blood adventures. You could also intersperse the adventures from "Firing Line" and "Sprawl Wilds", which are dual-statted for both 4th and 5th editions. Two of these (Humanitarian Aid and Burn) play very well into the Season 4 story arcs. The others make nice side trips, with the possible exception of "Lost Islands Found", which I frankly don't grok.

Season 5 is a bit more problematic. First, aside from the dual-statted adventures from "Firing Line" and "Sprawl Wilds", there are only three adventures published for Season 5. There are 16 convention missions from 2013 and 2014 as well, but these are not publicly available. And while there are some really interesting characters and situations in these three (and the next two of the first batch of six), the shape of the overall story arc is somewhat lacking. The individual adventures are good, it's just the thread that binds them isn't nearly as strong.

This doesn't mean you couldn't use these as a launching point, but does mean you don't have very much to go with unless you're an active Catalyst Demo Agent and have access to the Season 5 material that's not published yet.

[Agonar]

Critical Glitch offers a good summary of the Season 4 Missions here
http://criticalglitch.com/?p=280

As for converting them to SR5, it's not that difficult.  You might come across certain mods, spells, or accessories that aren't released yet in SR5, but it shouldn't be too difficult to get around these.  The main bulk of the stats and skills should be usable as is.

Other than that, I've run a few of these as a home game.  Since these are meant for conventions, or single night sessions at game stores, the fine details are a little lacking.  In a home game, players tend not to rush through the content as fast, and I found myself basically needing to come up with a lot more of the personal motivations of certain people, and other general filler.  The Mission is set up to pretty much go from Point A to B to C, and my Players wanted to go from A to Koala to 32 to D to Ice Water to B, etc...  So my advice with that is make sure you are familiar with the mission before you run it, and make sure you can fill in some of the blanks that most players will typically want answered.

[Namikaze]

A useful tool I've found for converting NPCs in particular is the conversion guide.

[PiXeL01]

When I returned to shadowrun after skipping sr4 I bought both spawl wilds and firing line. I don't run them as is but build runs around them, even entire campaigns. The people who wrote these did a tremendous job even though they are very combat orientated.
Currently I'm reading through Elven Blood because I want to run in Tir Tairngire at some point.

So yes, I think they are great for inspiration. Read them and use them as such but add a lot more meat and RP opportunities. Home games aren't restricted by a 6 hour timer so run wild!

[Wailer]

If you're looking for a long term arc that really fleshes out a setting and has numerous NPCs, organizations and a pretty expansive area with lots of white space - I'd recommend looking way back to the second season of Missions adventures, set in Denver. 

Granted, if you're running 5th, this'll take some porting over as well as some digging through older sourcebooks for Denver info. It has a long story arc over the course 24 missions, which give you a lot of additional material to work with, while allowing a great deal of 'white space' to develop and run off on your own tangents.  The primary arc deals with the Denver criminal underworld, with a lot of other goodies thrown in ... and the perk is that every one of the Missions are free for download on the main Shadowrun site (Or were, last I checked).

In general, the Denver missions have a more cohesive long term campaign feel, while say, Season 4 Seattle has more of a Monster of the week compartmentalized episode feel. That said, I would also argue that the season 4 runs are much stronger on an individual basis, and many of them have become the new classics, with some very Iconic community memories.  This isn't to say that they don't have a cohesive story - they're just more 'pockety' and it's a shorter overall arc..  If you're looking for more of a Pathfinder Adventurer Path feel,  check out the old Denver stuff.

- Wailer